Chromium Compounder

I doubt they have to re-bond to their blade, and I think I remember something at the beginning of WoK saying that their blades don't vanish when dropped. Instead they vanish when the Herald dies. I'm guessing they can choose to make them vanish like how a shard bearer can choose to keep their blade from vanishing. It's a different situation of course for when a non-herald like Szeth bonds an Honorblade. It probably makes it behave more like a Shardblade, other than of course giving Surgebinding.

The main evidence in my mind that it's not Taln's Honorblade is that after becoming a Radiant, Dalinar heard screams while holding the blade. I suppose it's possible that there was something else about the blade that caused the screaming, but every other time we've had a radiant touch a blade and hear screaming it was because the blade was a dead spren. If touching an Honorblade caused Radiants to hear screaming, then Kaladin should have heard screaming when he took Szeth's blade (which is actually Jezrien's). And when they mention the 'other blades' they refer to the 7 others. Three blades are accounted for. Jezrien's was carried by Szeth, but is now with Kaladin. Taln's, which we've been debating its location. And I read somewhere that there is WoB which says one of the other heralds went back and reclaimed their blade after abandoning the Oathpact. That leaves 7, which many believe to be in Shinovar (me included), but the parts that mention them are kind of vague so we can't know for sure.

Interesting idea. Definitely possible, though it seemed to me like Taln hadn't had much time after coming back before arriving in Kholinar. I'm still in favor of the idea that Hoid switched them. That doesn't mean that Taln isn't still bound to his blade and couldn't summon it if he needed to, but I think Hoid would be in favor of keeping Taln's Honorblade safe until he was recovered enough to make use of it again.

I've been wondering that as well. The only thing I can think is that Hoid switched them at some point before it got to Dalinar.

I'm not done with WoR yet, but I just passed a part that I had to mention before I forget it. When Eshonai is speaking with the 5 she says the Surgebinding they saw at the Tower battle could have been one of the Honorblades, and that they "left one in Alethkar that night". We don't know exactly what Honorblades are, but I think we may have enough hear to tell us a little bit. We have WoB that Szeth's surgebinding doesn't come through a nahel bond with a spren like Kaladin's, but he wouldn't say how it did come. Currently my theory is that it comes through his blade, and that his blade is the Honorblade Eshonai was talking about. I could very easily be proven wrong by something later in the story, but I didn't want to forget about this before I finished the story.

I wouldn't put it that way. The only time the state of the shards themselves (not the holders) changes is when Sazed takes them and becomes Harmony. And when that happens we do see changes. Snapping is less dangerous now. Spook was the last Mistborn. Atium and Malatium are gone, replaced by Cadmium and Bendalloy. Although I believe all of that was consciously done by Harmony.

I've had the same thought. I believe the closest we have to any information about this is a WoB about AonDor saying that it existed before the Odium's visit to Sel, and that it was slightly different, but I don't think he gave us anything specific.

I really love the idea of Double Chromium (as my name suggests). Infinite luck, so long as I always have enough Chromium. And if anyone tries to use allomancy against me, I just need to get close enough to touch them to make them lose their metals. Other fun combinations: Double Brass Feruchemical iron and Allomantic steel (As Wax demonstrates, that's a good combo) Feruchemical cadmium and Allomantic pewter (world's best swimmer) Feruchemical electrum and Allomantic zinc (staring contest world champion)

I think part of the problem with double gold twin born is that becoming careless would be pretty much unavoidable. You're basically invincible, but other than that you don't have anything special going for you, so you look for ways for your invincibility to be used as a weapon. You end up leaping into dangerous situations, and even if you do your best to take care to avoid traps, a clever opponent will be able to catch you.

I don't think Odium (the Shard, not Rayse the holder) is inherently evil, though the intent of it is likely going to cause a person to do evil things. The shards each have two aspects to them, the huge power, and the intent. The intents are all cold and emotionless. All of them, Honor, Odium, Preservation, Ruin, Endowment, Cultivation, Devotion, and Dominion. They're all cold and don't really care or even understand things like good and evil. Their intents are like AI. The AI itself is neither evil nor good. People don't measure AI for good or evil, only for effectiveness. Let's look at the example of Nightblood. He's commanded to Destroy Evil, but he has no clue what Evil is. And when Vasher draws Nightblood he gets caught up in Nightblood's command 'Destroy Evil'. Vasher, who tries very hard to be a good person, and is arguably quite successful at it at the time of the story, goes on a rampage and has very little control over his own actions. I think of holding a shard as being like having a voice constantly whispering at you to do that intent. Even a seemingly good intent could make you go crazy eventually, causing you to lose yourself to the need to fulfill the intent. All that being said, I think people look too much at the name of the shards. I think many of us take the names of the shards too literally, instead of thinking about what the intent truly is. When Sazed first touches the shards of Preservation and Ruin the impressions he gets of them seem to me like they are the true essence of those intents. Preservation is a force of Stability. Ruin is a force of Change. Both are useful. Neither is good nor bad, but both can be used to both ends. So then, why is the force of Stability called Preservation and the force of Change called Ruin. Each one on its own and left unchecked will lead to that. Too much Stability becomes a state of complete constancy. The closest thing to that IRL would be having things Preserved in a deep freeze. Too much Change leads to complete entropy. Everything gets Ruined. Harmony of course has both forces. Two opposing forces, keeping each other in check. Hence the name Harmony. I think this is why the shards have the names they do. Each is a force of some kind, and left unchecked it will lead to a result, which is what the shard is named. The force however is like fire. Fire is neither good nor bad. It is useful. So, that leads to the question of what kind of force are the other shards. I'm not positive on all of them, but for Odium I think it's a force of Discernment. It helps people to categorize things, see what things are similar to each other, etc. Left unchecked this leads to a whole lot of Us vs Them, but that doesn't make the force behind it bad. Discernment is useful. It's only when it goes to far does it become a problem.

Shard of Weakness - Inspires those around the weak and helpless to help them, despite the enormous costs to their money, social life, and amount of sleep. (For those of you who can't tell, I'm a dad.)

That would be fun. She just takes a whole bunch of cadmium and lets the centuries fly by after she gets bored with the present.

I'm pretty sure Wayne is referencing one of the religions in the Words of Origin books that Sazed gave people at the end of HoA. It could be something learned from a world hopper before TLR's time though.

Scadrial is an interesting situation. Whether it's younger or not isn't really why it's so homogeneous. That's 100% TLR's doing. Before he took power there were hundreds of cultures, and most likely they each had there own particulars about their appearance, just as we do on Earth. When he took power though he basically forced everyone in the Final Empire into one of three cultures: Nobility, Skaa, and Terris. The Terris are described as being tall and having differences in the shape of their faces. Thanks to TLR's very strict control of Terris breeding, they are still separate from the other races when the story starts. They don't start to mix until the end of HoA. The Nobility and the Skaa intermixed quite a bit over his thousand year reign, so by the time we see them they're practically the same race, but in one of the books (I think MB:TFE) it says that at the beginning of his reign the nobles were taller than the Skaa. Nobles also had a harder time having children while Skaa had a hard time not having children. In AoL Scadrial has pretty much had a fresh start. It's only been 300 years since Harmony remade the world, so it makes sense that everyone is pretty much the same.

I like this. I don't think Odium would have any reason one way or the other to destroy planets or stars, but I also don't think Honor would really care about stars either. He does however care about Shards and people. I think the stars they were looking at weren't literal, but metaphors, or perhaps that's what it looks like when viewing shards from other shard worlds from within the cognitive or spiritual realms. Either way I think the stars represent shards, and the two stars winking out would be Devotion and Dominion, which conceivably happened before Odium shattered Honor.

In honor of today's special I'm going to give this suggestion: You could of course make a wooden box, large enough to step into, with a door, and Forge it to be a Tardis.

We have no evidence to the contrary, but I don't think we have WoB or anything saying so either way. It makes sense though that all the original holders would have been on the planet where the Shattering happened when it happened, and most likely they're from there. It's possible they were world hoppers like Hoid, and the 17th shard, but most likely not. And the planet most believe the Shattering happened on is Yolen, which is apparently where Dragonsteel takes place. I'm looking forward to the day when Brandon revises Dragonsteel and publishes a canon version of it, but who knows when that will be.

I'm not sure if we're allowed to talk about excerpts Brandon has read from unpublished works, but he links to the video of him reading it on his website, so I figured it might be ok. If not please let me know. Anyway, in his reading of Shadows of Self there seems to be a book that is written by Marsh about Hemalurgy. That in itself is cool, because it means we might find out more about the most mysterious of the Metallic Arts, but the small portion of it we get to hear sounds like Marsh is saying that Hemalurgy has changed and that it's no longer evil. I'm wondering what exactly he means by that, and what all is involved with the change. Is the change simply that those with hSpikes in them now hear Harmony instead of Ruin? I've been wondering about that, and I don't think all of the violence and sadism of the Koloss and the Inquisitors could be from Ruin whispering in their ears. I think I saw someone else hint at this idea before, but basically it's that those with an hSpike get a little of the intent (either Ruin or Harmony) which constantly affects them, even when not actually hearing the whispers. The stronger the mind of the person the more they can resist this intent, hence the reason Ruin frequently had to focus on Marsh. So, is this change simply that the whispers and the intent coming through the hSpike is now Harmony? Or has more changed about Hemalurgy? After all, if that's all that's changed, there's still the fact that Hemalurgy is as Marsh put it "messy". Could something have changed to make it less so? Perhaps the spikes no longer have to go through the person's heart to steal investiture from them? Perhaps it could go through other parts of their bodies, which they have a chance of surviving? Or perhaps it's changed in some other way? I don't know. Anyway, food for thought.

Shard of PMS. Only gives powers to women, and they can only use it a few days a month.

Carefully set up a speed bubble so the edge of it will be right next to someone you really don't like. Go over to them, break some massive wind, then go back where you were before dropping the bubble.

No, that would end up like Halandren. Everyone is given an equal share to start with (one Breath), but in the end it's all in the hands of the government.

When are we going to see an example of the 'mechanical' way to use metallic arts?

I would think it's more talking about side effects. Perhaps it would undo the lightening of eyes. The main thing I think of for this is the damaging of the body a Savant gets.

The worst would be Clowns. <shudder/> Sarcasm wouldn't be too bad. I'd fit in fairly well. The intent of Boredom could be interesting. But yeah, please, no clowns. I can handle dragons, undead, demons, IRS agents, whatever, but please, please, no clowns.

While I agree that at least some metals may be able to do either quantitative or atomic as long as you know how, I think that the things stored atomically wouldn't be quite the same as the ones stored quantitatively. If that's the case, then I think the key to using Feruchemy atomically is finding something which fits that metal and also can be defined Realmatically as a specific thing. Again I go to Shai for wisdom. She can't forge a part of something, only an entire thing. Storing memories atomically you take a specific memory and store it. How do you define a memory? Is it a consecutive set of experiences? No, not really. That's not how we organize our memories. Let's say Sazed wanted to record a book the size of TFE. I would think it would be hard to do the whole book in one memory because it's too big, so he would break it into chapters. But let's say in the middle of chapter 5 he needs to go to the bathroom. Do you think going to the bathroom will go into the memory? I doubt it. It's not relevant to the memory. Yes, technically it happened with it, but so what. The memory is of what's happening in the book. So, the point is that to store things atomically you need to have something which can be defined as a specific Realmatic entity and which can be stored in that type of metal. For Pewter, I have trouble defining portions of my physical strength as being separate from each other, unless you want to separate it by body part, and then atomically storing the strength of one part would make that part be completely atrophied. I picture the legs of an olympic runner changing to be as weak as those of a paraplegic. And as this is atomic storage, tapping it would simply return it to normal. It could possibly be useful through compounding, or perhaps as a means of disguise, but that's about it. For most of Feruchemy, it's hard to define Realmatic entities which fit into that metal's mold. Memory we've already seen. If you had a split personality I can see it working for Aluminum, but otherwise trying to do it would probably result in you becoming a vegetable. Duralumin you could perhaps store your connection with a specific person. The only other one I can think of a way to get it to work atomically is Nicrosil, and with Nicrosil I think it would be hard to do it any other way. And now you've forced me back into talking about Feruchemy, so I'm going to ask the question of what would happen if you were to Forge a metalmind? Would anything unexpected happen, akin to Compounding? Would the metalmind resist all forgery? Would you only be able to forge it physically, but be unable to effect the Feruchemical charge within? That brings up another question. What is required to do things like Compounding? We know that Feruchemy is of both Preservation and Ruin, while Allomancy is only of Preservation. Is that relationship required? Also Feruchemy is End Neutral while Allomancy is End Positive. Is that required?